Contained herein is material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the United States Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all rights to the copyright whatsoever. The following notice applies to the software and data as described below and in the drawings hereto: Copyright(copyright) 2001, All Rights Reserved.
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to the field of semiconductor mask fabrication. More particularly, the invention relates to a system and method for fabricating a mask using a post exposure modification of an exposure image.
2. Background Information
Masks are often used to manufacture semiconductor devices and logic products. FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary lithography system 100 that may be used to manufacture semiconductor devices based on a mask 130. The system 100 includes a radiation source 110 to generate and transmit radiation 120 to the mask 130. The mask 130 contains a circuitry pattern 140 that creates and transmits a patterned radiation 150. Typically the patterned radiation 150 is only a portion of the radiation 120.
The patterned radiation 150 contains circuitry information and is provided to a semiconductor manufacturing process 160. Typically, the patterned radiation 150 is used to selectively print or expose portions of a resist layer and then subsequent processing is used to manufacture a semiconductor device or logic product based on the exposure.
One prior art problem is that the mask 130 and the pattern 140 may have inaccuracies, errors, or both. The inaccuracies or errors may occur due to a number of factors, such as faulty manufacturing equipment, manufacturing equipment that is not properly calibrated, and other factors. Regardless of the cause, the errors are transferred via the patterned radiation 150 to the semiconductor manufacturing process 160 and are incorporated into the manufactured semiconductor devices. This may result in a larger proportion of semiconductor devices that do not meet specifications, that have degraded performance, or that may fail.